With the increasing interest in heat-applied lettering, numerals, and other indicia on fabrics of all kinds, it has become desirable to provide an efficient and compact heat sealing machine which may be used by a shopkeeper or the like in the normal course of business as an adjunct to garment sales. To enable such a machine to be used readily by essentially unskilled workers, it is desirable that the machine be simple and foolproof in its operation so that a garment salesperson may, while a customer waits, imprint the garment with the selected letter, numeral or other indicia.
Heat sealing machines of various types have appeared on the market for several years, but for the most part have been difficult to operate successfully particularly by unskilled workers and such machines have not been well-suited to the wide variety of fabrics and the indicia which may be applied thereto now in vogue. Accordingly, there has been a need for the provision of a machine which may be readily operated with a minimum of instruction to imprint fabrics while a customer waits, such being carried out, for example, by the salesperson as a part of the garment sale. Desirably, the machine should be of compact form, occupy minimal counter space and be capable of programming by the operator in accordance with the requirements for the particular garment or indicia to be applied thereto. The guesswork in applying the indicia to the garment generally involved in the prior art machines should be, to as great an extent as possible, eliminated from a machine of the character under consideration.
The following U.S. Patents show heat sealing machines representative of relevant prior art, but none of these is satisfactory for the particular purpose intended:
U.S. Pat. No. 2,644,151 (Krueger); PA1 U.S. Pat. No. 3,035,510 (Carpenter, et al); PA1 U.S. Pat. No. 3,454,741 (Stewart); PA1 U.S. Pat. No. 3,925,139 (Simmons); PA1 U.S. Pat. No. 3,923,590 (Humphries); PA1 U.S. Pat. No. 3,979,248 (Kussmaul); PA1 U.S. Pat. No. 4,386,993 (Matsuo); PA1 U.S Pat. No. 4,421,589 (Armini, et al).